Even worse, when I first saw the Deja Vu album cover when I was a lad -- with all the arty-farty caligraphy, I read it as "Crosby Stills Nash & Donny" (instead of "Crosby Stills Nash & Young") ... so that's how I always think of them LOL

I'm puzzled by your vocals problem -- I've played "out house" by Crosby Stills & Nash -- which is lagely vocals -- and it works great -- have you put a 'scope' on the input signal to see what's going in?

If you email me at max@clivemaxfield.com -- I'll send you the Arduino code I'm using to drive my BADASS display -- this includes the part that reads the data from the MSGEQ7s with the correct delays in it).

MaxThanks for your quick response and all the info. I just watched your BADASS display and I have to say it discouraged me from building my own analyzer :(, I know I'll never get close to that (just kidding! Baby steps).About the function generator and the shield, I live in Mexico, so it's kind of hard for me to try to get any of those (I barely got the MSGEQ7, I envy you and the way you get everything practically from around the corner :( ) I'll take a deeper look at the posts when I get home.When it is done I'll share some photos or video on what you've helped to build :)Thanks a lot.jreza

@Jreza: What is the input level required by the MSGEQ7? Is it enough with just the output signal from a regular portable player? (from your tutorial it seems it does). Is it enough with the output level of a regular mic?

Hi there -- I think you're going to really enjoy playing with this chip. Take a look at This YouTube Video showing two of these chips driving my BADASS Display.

I'm using the output from the headphone jack from my iPod (sometimes my iPad) with no problems at all -- typically I set the iPad to about 3/4 full volume to drive this chip -- then I control the actual sound volume using the amplifier driving the speakers.

I started off by creating a prototype using a breadboard (see This YouTube Video), but later my chum Duane Benson took my circuit and generated a special printed circuit board (PCB) for an Arduino Shield (this uses two MSGEQ7 chips -- one for each channel).

You can buy one of these boards from Duane from his SteelPuppet.com website if you wish.

Are you using an Arduino? If so, one of the things I do when I've just built a new sound analyzer card (I've now constructed three using Duane's shield for different projects) is to use the Serial I/O to display the numerical values on the screen so I can see what's happening -- you could use this technique to see how your microphone was working.

If you want to see some example Arduino code for this, email me at max@clivemaxfield.com and I'll send it to you.

Hi there.I'm getting all the components to start this proyect. Thanks for the tutorial. I have a question though, What is the input level required by the MSGEQ7? Is it enough with just the output signal from a regular portable player? (from your tutorial it seems it does). Is it enough with the output level of a regular mic?Thanksjreza